Blog posts tagged with 'finland'

The American fascination with all things Scandinavian, from hygge to the minimalist architecture and design, has been growing over the past few years and launched a number of articles and books obsessed with what makes Denmark and its northern neighbors among the happiest and highest performing cultures in the world, such as Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People. New York Times and Atlantic Journalist Anu Partanen adds to the conversation with her recent release The Nordic Theory of Everything.

The Shetland Islands are a Scottish archipelago located to the northwest of Great Britain. Visitors to Shetland are told that the island lies upon the 60th parallel, as though this means something. And to many locals, it does. For them, the 60th parallel signifies that the archipelago is more than just isolated islands—it is connected to the larger world in a meaningful way.
When Shetland native Malachy Tallack was 16, his father died. “It was the kind of quiet, ordinary day on which nothing extraordinary ought to happen. But it did,” he writes. Shortly after the funeral, he found himself staring out the window of his house in Lerwick, Shetland, imagining the 60th parallel unfolding before him into the distance.

In his new book The Almost Nearly Perfect People, Guardian journalist Michael Booth writes with laugh-out-loud humor and brutal candor about the Scandinavians, mixing history with his own experiences, including residency in Denmark and travel throughout Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland. In this interview, Booth elucidates the idiosyncrasies and charms of each Scandinavian nation, from eco-footprints to Legoland.

Longitude. Your book encourages readers to look past tropes and stereotypes about the Nordic countries. Were you guilty of buying into some of the stereotypes yourself? Which ones?
Booth.

“When faced with the happiest, most trusting, and successful people on the planet, one’s natural instinct is to try to find fault.” At least, that’s British journalist Michael Booth’s impulse in his new book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People, as he journeys to each of the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden), propelled by the world’s increasing interest in these so-called perfect societies. Booth is especially intrigued because, after living in Denmark for more than a decade, he doesn’t see the relationship between the hype and the reality.